The Truth We Bury: A Novel

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Just watching you with him in my office. There was a warmth and a kind of respect between you. AJ was more formal with his dad, if that makes any sense.”

  “It does,” Lily said. “The dream I had . . . I feel as if AJ is out here somewhere, trying to tell me something.” Edward would laugh now; Lily was sure of it.

  But he didn’t. He said, “You might be right. I think you need to follow your instinct on this.”

  “The evidence, though, it’s hard not to see it the way the police do—as if AJ is guilty.”

  “Evidence can be wrong, and it may well be in this case. Has anyone said anything to you about a traffic altercation that took place here in Dallas a few days before Becca was murdered, between Kate and Becca and a guy driving a light-gray, late-model Ford F1 pickup?”

  “No,” Lily said.

  “Do you know anyone who drives a truck like that?”

  Lily said she didn’t. “Not that I can recall.” She hadn’t seen any vehicle at Harlan Cate’s place other than the Harley.

  “Well, evidently this guy was a real head case. The girls were in Becca’s car, and he claims he saw her texting, that she came over into his lane and nearly clipped him. He ran them off I-35 onto the service road and pulled a gun on them. He had both girls on their knees when a highway patrol officer, setting up radar, happened to catch sight of them and went to investigate.”

  “My God.”

  “If it hadn’t been for the cop, the guy might have killed both girls right there.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “A connection in the DA’s office, on pain of death if I should ever reveal my source. But here’s the thing—the very significant thing—the guy is missing. The cops have issued a BOLO for him. Not even his wife seems to know where he is. Word is, the guy went missing the very same night that Becca was killed and AJ disappeared.”

  Lily felt light-headed. Breathless.

  “He has a history of emotional instability, Lily. According to his wife, he’s under court-mandated psychiatric care for going after the woman who drives their daughter’s bus. The woman brought charges against him when he roughed her up after she disciplined the girl for not staying in her seat. Like I said, he’s a head case.”

  Lily’s relief, the thrust of her hope, felt wrong and lasted only a moment. “He has AJ,” she said.

  “It’s possible,” Edward said. “The cops are actively looking for him.”

  Somehow Lily didn’t find it reassuring. “It’s hard, waiting, doing nothing, listening for the phone to ring.”

  “I’m so sorry you’re going through this, Lily.”

  Her throat closed; tears sanded the undersides of her eyelids. It was his kindness that undid her.

  “Try and rest. Eat something.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I will.”

  “What I said about your instinct, Lily—don’t discount it, okay?”

  Lily thought about Edward’s advice on the drive back to the ranch. Maybe it was true. Maybe the bond she shared with AJ, the tie that had so closely connected them when he was small, before Paul took the care of him out of her hands, was still there. She thought of the dream she’d had, the nightmare of reliving AJ’s near-drowning at Monarch Lake. She had perceived the dream as renewed punishment. How could she have done it, brought him into such jeopardy? She didn’t deserve to be his mother. If his life was again at risk, she must be to blame. She had felt all that, as if a sickness had overtaken her, whether it made sense or not.

  But maybe that wasn’t the point of the dream.

  Maybe, like Scrooge, she’d been given a review of the past so that she could see that although she had put AJ in danger all those years ago, she had saved him, and she might have the means to save him now. It seemed far-fetched. She could imagine Paul’s reaction. He wouldn’t say a word. The only sound would be the disapproving click of his tongue.

  Over lunch, Lily told her dad about the traffic altercation involving Becca and Kate. She’d made sliced chicken sandwiches, and they sat at the kitchen island to eat them. “When I spoke to Paul, he said he’d talk to Detective Bushnell about following up.”

  “Paul still set against retaining Edward for AJ? He’s going to need a lawyer when we find him, even as promising as this lead sounds.”

  “I’m not pushing it,” she said. “I’ll wait till we know more.”

  Her dad took their plates to the sink and rinsed them. “I’m going to ride over to Little Bottom Creek,” he said over his shoulder. “The fort’s over that way. I didn’t get a chance to check it out yesterday. You want to come?”

  She started to ask how he could still think AJ was close by, but there was something working in his eyes that stopped her, a kind of canniness, a sharp knowing that raised the fine hairs on her neck. She remembered Edward’s advice to trust her intuition. “I’ll come,” she said, “but give me a minute, I want to call Shea and Dru and tell them about the traffic incident.” Neither woman answered, though, and Lily left a brief request for a return call.

  A billowing mass of thunderheads the color of ripened plums was gathering in the northwest corner of the sky as Lily and her dad rode out of the barn. They headed in a westerly direction. The wind snapped, an invisible sheet on a line whipping through the canopies of the oaks, turning up the leaves, showing their pale undersides.

  “Don’t reckon we’ll beat the rain,” her dad said. “You might want to turn back unless you don’t mind getting soaked.”

  She gave him a look.

  They didn’t speak again until they’d ridden across the Little Bottom. Her dad paused on the opposite bank, lifted his hat, ran a hand over his hair.

  “You remember where the fort is from here?” Lily asked, riding up beside him.

  “Over that way, I think.” He nodded vaguely. “It’s been a while since I’ve been back this way.” Confusion mixed with defeat in his voice. It was there, too, in the slump of his shoulders. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. Whatever had brought them out here—whether intuition or impulse—it was gone now, just as Lily had begun to believe in it.

  A thrust of irritation knotted her brow. Fool’s errand. The words lifted from the floor of her mind. She said, “I think you’re right about the direction.” She nudged Butternut’s flanks with her boot heels. She wasn’t at all sure, but she couldn’t face going back to the house, sitting there, waiting for the next thing and the next to happen. She didn’t care how little sense it made to continue searching—at least she was moving. At least she was doing something.

  She heard the clomp of Sharkey’s hooves as her dad followed behind her. They skirted a cedar thicket, climbed a coarsely graveled incline. A clap of thunder rattled the air, muttered, faded. The birds fell silent. Lily waited to feel the rain, but it held off.

  “Look.” Her dad had stopped some distance back.

  She reined Butternut and turned to follow his line of sight. Across a rocky meadow, she saw a stand of oaks, ancient, thick girthed. Looking closer, some twelve feet off the ground, she could make out the rough outline of a wall. Above that, the slant of a rusted metal roof caught a storm-shot glimmer of light. She rode back to her dad’s side. “Is that it?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can’t believe it’s still here. C’mon.” The purpose was back in his voice, his posture.

  She was there before him, though, and dismounting, she circled the trees, the three oaks that provided the main support for the fort, hunting for the way up, finding a ladder half the distance around.

  “Sissy, wait,” her dad called. “That ladder may be rotten. It won’t hold your weight.”

  “Well, it for sure won’t hold yours,” she called back, and it was in the short silence after her words died away that she heard it, a noise overhead, a light scraping followed by a knocking sound. And now—now—was that a voice? Human? Animal? Her heart hammered in her chest. She set her hand and her foot on the rungs of the ladder, and she began to clim
b.

  “Lily! Don’t do it.”

  She looked down at her dad, warning finger to her lips. She caught the serrated flash of lightning, and moments later thunder shook the tree limbs. The ladder shifted, and a squawk of alarm jammed her throat, thankfully stopping there. The scrabbling noises increased. She thought she heard panting, moaning, but it might have been the wind, her own blood in her ears. The fort was small, maybe ten feet square, and built of cedar logs. The walls were set inside a platform some eighteen inches deep, creating a narrow porch. Reaching it, she peered over its edge and saw that the door, and the windows on either side of it, were open. She ducked out of sight, and while the fresh crack of thunder startled her, she was glad for it and for the sound of the wind that kept her presence secret. Pulling herself onto the ledge, she looked at her dad, raising her thumb: so far, so good.

  “Come down.” His face, pale, uptilted, he mouthed the words.

  She raised her finger at him. In a minute.

  He shook his head, walking in a frustrated circle.

  On all fours, she crawled to the wall and, flattening herself against it, leaned around the door frame. At first she could make out nothing specific, but once her eyes adjusted to the gloom, a wave of sheer panic jolted her. What seemed like an eternity but was in fact only seconds passed before she was crawling back toward the ladder, shouting, “Dad! Oh my God, Dad, get up here!”

  16

  Kate was your best friend, Shea.” Dru looked over at her daughter. They were in Shea’s white Camry, parked at the curb, a block down from the Kincaids’ house. A dozen or more cars lined the street. Others were crowded into the Kincaids’ driveway. Dru recognized Joy’s Suburban and Terri’s Explorer. She didn’t know what Vanessa’s mother, Connie, drove, but she was no doubt here. Terri and Connie would have brought their daughters, Vanessa and Leigh, Shea’s two remaining bridal attendants.

  Dru wondered if the coroner in Dallas had released Becca back to her mom and dad yet. She wondered if Kate would undergo forensic examination prior to her burial, too. It was so awful to contemplate. Who was next? Dru was scared for Shea, scared for anyone who had a connection to the wedding. The most joyous occasion, turned now into a horrible, twisted nightmare.

  “I can’t go in there, Mom.” Shea lifted her hands from the steering wheel. That gesture, the helplessness it suggested, set Dru off.

  “This isn’t about you, Shea. It’s about Charla and Kent, giving them our condolences, paying our respects. Joy and Gene, too—they need to hear from us.”

  “You go, then.”

  Dru looked at Shea in exasperation. “You’re going to have to face everyone at some point, like it or not.”

  “Fine!” Shea barked the word. “But this is a mistake. They don’t want my condolences, trust me.” Flinging the Toyota door open, she got out of the car, marching down the sidewalk toward the Kincaids’ house.

  Dru clamped down on her annoyance, a hot urge to shout, “Wait!”

  Shea had rung the doorbell by the time Dru reached the front porch, and the two waited for someone to answer, standing shoulder to shoulder, grim-faced, barely breathing. Dru felt panic grip her stomach. It was almost without thinking that she reached for Shea’s hand. Her heart eased at Shea’s answering grasp.

  Dru didn’t recognize the woman who answered the door. She was older, gray-haired. Grief combined with exhaustion bruised her eyes. She greeted them and introduced herself. “I’m Leona, Kent’s mother,” she said.

  Dru offered her name, and Shea’s, as they followed Leona into the foyer. She said how sorry she was they were meeting under such horrible circumstances. They had paused beneath the archway that separated the foyer from the great room when Leona turned to stare at Shea. “You’re the bride.” She made it sound like an accusation.

  Dru’s glance shot past Leona, taking in the crowd of mostly women. Some were gathered in a group near the fireplace; others were seated on a pair of nearby sofas.

  “Why are you here?” Charla rose from a tufted leather ottoman.

  Ignoring the frisson of unease that tapped up her spine, Dru extended her hands to Charla. “We came—Shea and I came to say how sorry—”

  “Get out!” Charla batted at Dru’s hands. She addressed Leona. “Why did you let them in?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “How dare you show yourself here.” Joy put her arm around Charla.

  “Who do you think you are?” A woman whose name Dru couldn’t recall stepped into her view.

  “Did you think you’d be welcome?” another one wanted to know.

  “Wait a minute,” Dru began, but then she faltered, groping for words, not finding any. Her heart thumped in her chest. Beside her, Shea was mute.

  “Look at you.” Joy’s mocking glance swept from Dru to Shea. “You’re safe and sound. He won’t come after you, will he? Your beloved groom, the monster you can’t wait to marry. You know where he is, don’t you? Don’t lie. You’re in this with him. Am I right? You and your saintly mother—”

  “That’s enough, Joy.” Dru stepped in front of Shea.

  “Don’t you tell me what’s enough, Dru Gallagher. You still have your daughter.”

  The deafening silence was broken within seconds by a small cry, a mewling kitten cry. Dru heard it and then the sound of steps, Shea’s steps, running from her, from the women, their mean, accusing eyes. The front door opened and slammed shut with a resounding crack.

  Dru followed her.

  “When is it going to stop?” a voice shouted.

  “When all our girls are dead?” another cried out.

  Dru halted on the Kincaids’ front porch, glance careening up and down the street. The sky had darkened while they were inside. The wind blew, raising ribbons of dust along the curb. She caught the sound of thunder. Where was Shea? Frantic minutes passed before Dru caught sight of her, three doors down, on her hands and knees on the front lawn of some stranger’s house. The wind caught at her hair, the loose hem of her shirt. Dru cut across the two yards that separated them, and reaching Shea, knelt beside her, pulling back her hair, drawing it over Shea’s heaving back and shoulders. Until Shea spoke, until she said, “I tried to tell you,” through her clenched teeth, Dru thought Shea’s trembling was caused by her sobbing.

  But no.

  Shea was furious.

  At Dru.

  She took her arm away, braced her hands on her thighs. A curtain twitched at the window fronting the lawn. Dru prayed that whoever was watching would mind their own business, although the witness, likely the home owner, would have every right not to.

  She rubbed tentative circles between Shea’s shoulder blades. “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand—”

  “They’re just like you, Mom.” Shea sat back on her heels, angrily swiping at her eyes. “They made up their minds the second they heard Becca was murdered, and where, that AJ did it. He’s the monster responsible. For poor Katie, too. God!” Shea locked Dru’s gaze. “Why would anyone do this, Mama? Kill my friends? Make it look as if AJ did it? It’s got to be someone who hates him.”

  “Does Harlan Cate know AJ well enough to hate him?” Dru asked.

  Shea thought about it. “I don’t think so.”

  Dru tucked Shea’s hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

  “About AJ?”

  Dru couldn’t go that far. “About paying a condolence call on Charla. I never imagined she and Joy would—I thought they were our friends.”

  “They don’t deserve this, Mom, losing their daughters this way. They want someone to blame. But so do I—the right person.” Shea’s voice took on an edge. “I want whoever did this to be caught and punished. I want justice for Becca and Kate.”

  “I’m really proud of you, that you’re able to be so understanding of Charla and Joy.”

  “I feel just like them. I’m so angry inside. I feel like I could kill whoever is doing this.”

  “Oh, honey—”


  “I’m going to miss Katie so much, Mama.” Shea’s voice broke, and Dru wrapped her in an embrace, grateful for the chance to hold her daughter so close she could feel the tempo of her heart. Dru rested her cheek on the crown of Shea’s head and tried not to think of Joy and Charla, that neither one would ever experience this privilege again.

  After a moment, Shea straightened, mopping her face, swiping under her nose.

  Getting to her feet, Dru said, “Let’s go before whoever lives here calls the police.”

  They walked back to the Toyota, and when Dru offered to drive, Shea handed over the keys. “At least you won’t have to cook the Kincaids a meal,” she said.

  “Well, yeah, there’s that, I guess.”

  Gallows humor. Their hallmark. They shared a grim smile.

  Shea got out her phone.

  Dru pulled away from the curb. It occurred to her that it was possible no one in town would hire her to cook for them again. She wondered if, given the circumstances, the teachers’ appreciation luncheon today had even taken place. Perhaps they’d tossed the meal Dru had prepared. She hadn’t heard from Amy. Had she been at Charla’s? Dru didn’t remember seeing her, but given the scrambled state of her mind, that didn’t mean anything.

  “Oh my God. Listen to this.”

  “What is it?” Dru glanced at Shea, who was reading from her phone.

  “It’s a text from Erik. Kate’s mom flipped out on him, too. Told him to get out of her house just like she did us.”

  “Why? She loves him.”

  “She accused AJ of pushing Kate off the cliff.” Shea was scrolling through the message, reading it as it revealed itself. “Erik defended him, and Charla told him to leave.”

  Dru briefly met Shea’s disbelieving gaze. She didn’t know what to say.

  “He sent this over two hours ago, while we were at the RV park. I wonder why I didn’t get it until now.” Her head was bent; she was engrossed. “There’s a phone message from Lily, too.” Shea tapped, accessing her voice mail, putting it on speaker.